2002 Groovin To Ancient Peru. A Critica PDF

02 Silverman (JG/d) 1/10/02 2:09 pm Page 298
Journal of Social Archaeology ARTICLE
Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 2(3): 298–322 [1469-6053(200210)2:3;298–322;027538]
Groovin’ to ancient Peru

A critical analysis of Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove
HELAINE SILVERMAN
Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
ABSTRACT
Disney animated movies have received abundant critical attention
over the past 30 years as a quintessentially American manifestation
of popular culture and as an expression of corporate and hegemonic
ideology. A recent blockbuster film prompts me, as an archaeologist,
to consider another aspect of this genre. I am interested in why
Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove explicitly does not name the
archaeological society in which its action is situated (Inca Peru),
although this is readily recognizable to archaeologists, and the
purpose that this sort of unacknowledged cultural plundering serves.
I argue that beyond an understandable ‘artistic license’ with the past
(thus Disney did not have to worry about issues of authenticity), this
movie (and others of its genre) manifests profound and disturbing
objectifications, essentializations, exoticizations and appropriations.
These issues implicate current theoretical discussions of simulacra and
representation, postmodern spectatorship, placelessness and travel.
KEYWORDS
appropriation ● cultural heritage ● Disney ● hyperreality ● identity ●
Peru ● postmodern spectatorship ● simulacra
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Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 299
■ READING DONALD DUCK
Critical studies of the Disney oeuvre are numerous, notably in the fields
of Communication, Education, and Cultural Studies (e.g. Aidman, 1999;
Bell et al., 1995; Byrne and McQuillan, 1999; Cubitt, 2000; Dorfman and
Mattelart, 1971; Giroux, 1999; Picker and Chyng Feng Sun, 2000; Schickel,
1968). One of the earliest and still one of the most influential critiques is
Para Leer el Pato Donald (How to Read Donald Duck) (Dorfman and
Mattelart, 1971), a Chilean indictment of Disney, which was written during
the brief freedom of Salvador Allende’s socialist government.
Dorfman and Mattelart’s decolonizing treatise recognizes and decon-
structs an economic and cultural imperialist ideology in Disney’s seemingly
innocuous comic book characters. They argue that Disney is representing
the ideological superstructure of an advanced capitalistic society in which
primary and secondary sector productive work is no longer done, but only
tertiary sector services. Conflict has no social base but is, rather, the outcome
of oppositional individual personalities. For Dorfman and Mattelart, the
Disney comics are an instruction guide of how underdeveloped Third World
peoples are to have dependent, consumerist relations with the First World
centres of international capitalism. ‘The situation is such that the only
relationship the inhabitant of the center can have with the inhabitant of the
periphery is dominated by the exoticism industry . . . tourism [is] based on
nostalgia for a lost, pure primitivism . . . a picture postcard for a service
sector only world’ (Dorfman and Mattelart, 1971: 154, author’s translation).
Now, decades later, one can again look at Disney in a Latin American
context. Disney has created The Emperor’s New Groove (henceforth,
Groove), a feature-length animated movie that archaeologists will readily
recognize as set in Inca Peru, but whose action Disney never geographi-
cally situates or culturally identifies. This anonymity combined with
Groove’s content (imagery, action, dialogue) go to the heart of issues
considered in Para Leer el Pato Donald, such as identity, history and auth-
ority in our transnational, deterritorialized, decentered and culturally
hybrid world. As Appadurai has observed, ‘The past is now not a land to
return to in a simple politics of memory. It has become a synchronic ware-
house of cultural scenarios, a kind of temporal central casting, to which
recourse can be taken as appropriate, depending on the movie to be made,
the scene to be enacted . . . the apparent increasing substitutability of whole
periods and postures for one another, in the cultural styles of advanced
capitalism, is tied to larger global forces’ (Appadurai, 1996: 30–31).
As a quintessential form of American public culture, animated movies
may be examined as a site where collective social understandings are
created and in which the politics of signification are engaged (see Hall,
1985: 36). The visual signifiers in these animated movies (one of many forms
of media) are interpreted uncritically by most viewers in accordance with
300 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)
a culturally sanctioned hegemony. Speaking of Disney overall, Giroux

(1999: 5) argues that its ‘power lies, in part, in its ability to tap into the lost
hopes, abortive dreams, and utopian potential of popular culture’. Disney’s
animated movies can be a particularly insidious ideological text because
their hegemonic images of the world are easily and, too often, unquestion-
ingly assimilated by audiences, especially the young. In the specific case of
Groove, ancient people, place and civilization are intentionally unnamed
and unrecognizable, at least to their general American audiences, as I
demonstrate below.
But Groove’s animated depictions did not arise out of the blank imagi-
nations of filmmakers in their studio. Rather, these images are the result of
conscious manipulations of an archaeologically and ethnohistorically well-
known social formation. It is therefore possible and worthwhile to compare
and contrast the understandings of the Incas who are anonymously
promoted by Disney with the real people who once thrived in their own
settlements and who today are represented by archaeological sites. The
tremendous box-office and videotape success of Groove behooves a critical
analysis of the messages constructed by the movie studio and received by
the viewing public.
■ METHODOLOGY
The methodology on which this article is based is far different from that
which I employ as an archaeologist. The data I report herein are derived
from the only source from which these could be available, the actual
animated movie. I saw Groove in a local movie theater when it first opened
in December 2000, and I subsequently purchased the ‘Ultimate 2 Disc DVD
Edition’ (henceforth, deluxe DVD) as soon as that became available. I
specifically chose that version as my text because the deluxe DVD contains
the movie itself (which, on DVD, is easy to start, stop and track) and a
supplementary disk with ‘behind-the-scenes’ discussions by the movie’s
director, producer and other key Disney personnel about how the story was
developed, visually conceived, animated, musically scored and publicized.
I was unable to interview the principals in the Disney offices.
In addition, I tracked and read a substantial amount of information about
Groove posted on the World Wide Web. These websites varied greatly: the
Disney official site; avocational members of The Online Film Critics Society,
such as upcomingmovies.com; independents, such as joblo.com, who live
precariously on the Internet through their marketing of other businesses’
merchandise; and prosperous diversified entertainment networks, such as
fangen.net, which recently subsumed thefilmcritiquer.com. Similarly, it is
important to appreciate this web diversity of film commentary in the context
of the various forms that film production takes in the USA, such as studio,
avant garde, mainstream, independent, conservative, liberal and so on.
Disney (and, specifically, Walt Disney Feature Animation) is a conservative
mainstream powerhouse studio, albeit with extraordinary visual imagination
and superb technology.
Using the Movie Review Query Engine I also compiled a total of 55
published reviews of Groove. In addition, I read 95 individually posted
reviews of Groove on the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) website. I take
these 150 reviews to be a random and representative sample of all reviews
of Groove circulating in the USA.
■ ISSUES OF HISTORY, HYPERREALIT Y AND SIMULACRA
Baudrillard (1995) has written of a disappearance of history and our current

disengagement from reality. He hypothesizes that through the acceleration
of the incredibly complex elements that comprise contemporary life, we
have moved beyond space-time where the real was possible. Acts and facts
of political, historical and cultural life hurtle into hyperspace where they
are unable to achieve their meaning because the ‘referential orbit of things’
has been broken. Thus, Baudrillard argues that history is indeterminate and
historical narrative is impossible because there now exists the potential for
‘re-narrativization’ of every sequence of meaning. Fragmentation, disartic-
ulation and an abundance of unstable, uncertain information have replaced
the grand historical narratives of the past. These features and the loss of a
real temporal progression propel our movement out of history and create
simulation. We are enamored of instantaneity and this destabilizes our
historical, lineal sense of time and its events, thereby disposing us to histori-
cize, archive, memorize, commemorate, rehabilitate and culturally museify
everything concerning our past and that of other cultures in what amounts
to ‘a vanishing of actual history . . . making the past itself into a clone, an
artificial double . . . instead of things first passing through history before
becoming part of the heritage, they now pass directly into the heritage’
(Baudrillard, 2000: 40). Things are linked as if they had meaning, but they
are associated only by artificial montage.
Given Baudrillard’s totalizing framework, it should not surprise us that
he has specifically taken on the Disney enterprise since Walt Disney was
the first innovator to create the imaginary as virtual reality on a grand scale
(e.g. Disneyland). Baudrillard (1983) argues that Disney is actively seeking
to capture the entire real world so as to integrate it into its own synthetic
project where the real becomes a theme park and simulacra are built on
existing simulacra thereby creating a hyperreal. Baudrillard further accuses
Disney of going beyond the erasure of the real and converting it into a
dimensionless virtual image. Disney, he observes, seeks to obviate time by
synchronizing all time periods and all cultures into a single atemporal
juxtaposition.
In a similar vein, Bryman (1995, 1999a, 1999b) identifies the ‘McDisney
theme park’ in which organizational principles of efficiency, control, calcu-
lability, predictability, and rationality reign. Of particular interest for the
analysis of Groove is how some of these features carry redundantly across
domains into more sectors of society, such that Disney attempts to ensure
an overwhelmingly positive Disney gaze (Bryman, 1999a: 106), whether at
its theme parks, in movie theaters, or in its own suburban development
(Celebration, FL). Groove presents an exoticized ‘Lake Wobegon’ where
all the men are strong, all the women are beautiful, and all the children are
above average. To go to the theater to see a Disney movie is to act upon
the expectation of being entertained happily – no matter how implausibly.
This predictability is effected by the scripting of Disney attractions in a form
so textual as to resemble critical discussions of European travel in the
Orient (e.g. Gregory, 1999; Said, 1979). As cinematic travelers, we are
primed in advance for our theater experience by Disney merchandise
associated with the film, by the film’s trailers on television, and by preview
film reviews. Disney published a US$3.49 child’s ‘Special Collector’s Issue’
for Groove in its Disney Adventures cartoon pocketbook series, providing
a ‘sneak peak into Disney’s new animated movie’. Disney and McDonald’s
partnered to produce a series of six toys of the main characters in Groove
(Kuzco, Kuzco as llama, Yzma, Yzma as kitty cat, Kronk, Pacha) for child
consumers. We enter the theater and encounter a carefully produced site
and sight. Groove has been signposted so that its virtual tourists can find
the movie’s sites and ‘locate them within an imaginative landscape where
they become meaningful as “sights” ’ (Gregory, 1999: 116). This scripting is
all the easier when the appropriated ancient place is left anonymous –
unlike, for instance, the real and assertive Egypt that was encountered by
European tourists and that had its own ‘dense materiality’ (see Gregory,
1999: 145).
Cubitt (2000), too, has written critically about the processes by which the
world loses its reality. He has specifically addressed the issue of simulation
in terms of Baudrillard’s (1983), Eco’s (1986) and others’ analyses of
Disneyland, the epitome of simulation, a place that exists only in order to
be photographed, a composite of ‘places’ simulated from foreign reality.
Cubitt (2000) finds commonality in these earlier assessments of Disneyland
(visitors are passive; the producers of Disneyland accomplish their goals
consistently; Disneyland exemplifies the fake and hyperreal), but he chal-
lenges these studies through his own deconstruction of the newer, larger,
more corporate, more diversified, more ambitious sister site(s) in and
around Orlando, FL. Cubitt argues, for instance, that some of Disney
World’s animatronic ‘cast members’ (employees), who are paid (poorly) to
espouse a tightly controlled script, improvise narratives and engage in
uncontrolled conversations with ‘guests’ (customers). Such verbal creativity

contravenes Eco’s and Baudrillard’s representations of an entirely pre-
programmed (passive) experience and shows them to be ethnographically
incomplete and factually inaccurate. ‘Guests’, too, may exercise their own
creative resistance to the script by breaking Disney’s banal rules, for
example, picnicking in car lots or not moving at the quick pace and in the
direction expected by Disney (here Cubitt’s sensitive analysis can be further
informed by de Certeau’s [1985] exposition of walking as a rhetoric of
practice and meaning-making). Reality also defies Disney’s attempted
successful management of picture perfection as when counter-utopian
(counter-Disney) accidents, assaults, injuries, and family squabbles occur
on the premises. And, as Cubitt (2000) traces, Disney films have had their
financial ups and downs for decades, with the company at times almost
crashing.
Cubitt emphasizes that despite the most aggressive of marketing
campaigns, it is impossible to predict the public’s response to cultural
products, further destabilizing the veracity of accounts argued by other
simulation theorists. Power and success of corporately managed consumer
culture cannot be presumed although, as Bryman (1995: 188) argues, even
the most active (versus Disney-passive) and resistant public/audience is
confronting vast media conglomerates. It is here that the discussion of simu-
lation may profitably engage Foucault’s work on power and return to
Groove. Foucault (1970: 319) explicitly linked the origins of modernity to
the reordering of power, knowledge and the visible. With Groove we have
the conundrum of postmodernity, where power, knowledge and the visible
are still tightly intermeshed, but without reference to a truly visible world:
simulation has moved us into the world of simulacra and hyperreality.
Disney’s ‘disneyfication’ of Groove can be profitably theorized in terms
of Eco’s discussion of textuality. Groove has a stereotypical narrative and
iconographic textual features that have been completely scripted by its
authors. The filmmakers employ Eco’s ‘common frame’ to move the story
along and Eco’s ‘intertextual frame’ to give it humor. The ‘common frame’
appears in Groove’s stereotyped situations, such as loving gestures between
the husband and wife and the wife-as-mother putting their rambunctious
children to bed. These kinds of actions are coded by our ordinary quotidian
experiences and let us identify with the characters despite the different
setting of the action. The ‘intertextual frame’ is stereotyped, but in refer-
ence to some preceding recorded textual tradition (here textual should be
understood broadly to encompass various media). We enjoy the film
because it is predicated upon common frame universals and clever inter-
textualities. An example would be when Emperor Kuzco’s guardsmen line
up and dance in the Irish style of Riverdance. Another example would be
Groove’s scene of a pseudo fast-food diner (of relevance here is Jameson’s
[1991: 2–3] identification of a ‘ “degraded” landscape of schlock and kitsch
. . . materials [buildings] no longer “quote” . . . but incorporate into their

very substance’). The incongruities of Groove are readily understood by
viewers on the basis of our pre-existing cultural knowledge. Groove is
successful because of its postmodernity ‘where the quotation of the topos
is recognized as the only way to cope with the burden of our film encyclo-
pedic expertise’ (Eco, 1986: 209).
■ DEPICTING THE PAST, DEHISTORICIZING THE INCAS
Whether in comic books or on the silver screen, in animated form or ‘real-

istically’ reconstructed in feature length, as performances of Shakespeare’s
own understandings of antiquity or as distinguished television series, such
as ‘I, Claudius’, the past is popular and highly marketable among the
viewing public (see, especially, Solomon, 2001; Wyke, 1997, 1999). Eco
(1986: 62) has quipped pointedly that ‘Americans want and really like
responsible historical reconstruction (perhaps because only after a text has
been rigorously reconstructed can it be irresponsibly deconstructed)’.
History, archaeology and filmmaking are all discourses about the past and,
as such, ripe for deconstruction.
Wyke (1997: 12–13), who focuses on ancient Rome, incisively argues that
films about the past are a primary source of information for the analysis of
the present context of these films’ production. She refers to historical films
as ‘a powerful new mode of historiography’ (Wyke, 1997: 13). I think that
the greatest power of the historical film genre, to which Wyke refers, resides
in its property of market saturation. Countless more people see such a film
and, too often, unquestioningly absorb its narration rather than read the
scholarly works by historians and archaeologists about the particular
society represented. Indeed, Baudrillard has predicted that future specta-
tors will watch movies about ancient Rome as if they were authentic ancient
Roman movies.
Where Groove diverges strongly from the historical movie genre is that
its plot is not presented as history. Rather, as explained by Groove’s produc-
tion team in the deluxe DVD audio commentary, ‘the flick’ has a moral
idea, a good message, and a visual look, music and dialogue to support the
story whose tone is high comedy. As is typical of all Disney films, Groove
seeks to present ‘recognizable moments that are universal . . . people see
themselves up there on the screen’ (Randy Fullmer, producer, speaking on
the deluxe DVD). Disney’s two trailers, three television ads and various
posters for Groove promote a movie in which humor and action are empha-
sized and the family values of friendship, courage and cooperation are
taught. Indeed, this emotional pitch appears to be why Disney scrapped an
earlier and more serious version of Groove, alternately titled Kingdom in
the Sun and Kingdom of the Sun (henceforth, Kingdom).
Disney’s prepositional waffling is significant. A kingdom in the sun could

be any kingdom at all. But a kingdom of the sun could only be the Incas if
the action of the movie were to remain situated in a mountainous place
with llamas (various Inca myths, as compiled by the Spaniards during their
conquest of the Inca Empire, indicate the major role of the sun in Inca state
ideology and religion; see summary in Urton, 1999: 52–4).
It appears that Disney had decided to go with in before scrapping the
Kingdom project (http://www.upcomingmovies.com/kingdomofthesun.html),
even committing to an official movie poster for Kingdom in the Sun. Never-
theless, Disney apparently could not work out its relationship to the real
archaeological past of Peru, since the poster (http://oakbay.sd61.bc.ca/~
tkhambanonda/DisneyDreamersClub/Posters_KingdomInTheSun.htm)
shows a distinctly Mayan temple.
The production of Kingdom suffered from major problems involving
disputes between the original directors contracted for the project (Roger
Allers and Mark Dindal) and studio discontent with the ambiguity of the
‘prince and the pauper’ storyline as it was evolving. Roy Disney (the
nephew of Walt and Vice Chairman of the Board of the Walt Disney
Company and Chairman of Walt Disney Feature Animation) and the studio
executives were unenthused about having a young Inca emperor switch
roles with a peasant boy as a wicked court official seeks the throne. Accord-
ing to thefilmcritiquer.com, as the work-in-progress versions of Kingdom
were edited together, ‘it became obvious that . . . Roger Allers was clueless
as to how to fix the film’, despite his previous mega-success as Disney’s
feature animation director for Aladdin, The Lion King and The Little
Mermaid. Allers was removed from Kingdom. Another factor identified as
contributing to Kingdom’s demise was Roy Disney’s lack of enthusiasm.
‘Roy Disney revealed while talking to Empire Online that Kingdom “began
life as a pretentious non-spoofy kind of movie about the Inca, the Andes
and all of the folklore about Sun Gods. It was really, really boring” ’
(http://www.thefilmcritiquer.com/the_film_critiquer/Animation_Previews/
KingdomintheSun.htm). Kingdom was possibly one-third complete, with
US$30 million already spent, when it was shelved. On 1 February 2000 the
title of Kingdom was officially changed to The Emperor’s New Groove and
a radically new direction (or new groove) was taken. Four years elapsed
between the start of Kingdom and the release of Groove.
In Groove, all that remains of the earlier project is the unnamed Inca-
based setting, the young emperor (now arrogant) turned into a llama, an
evil woman and a relationship with a peasant who is reworked as an older,
family man called Pacha. The change in title and plot also prompted Disney
to substitute ‘Kuzco’ as the name of the emperor, previously called Manco
Capac (after the legendary first emperor of the Incas) (see the discussion
of names below).
The imagery of Groove was generated on the basis of a 10-day trip to
Machu Picchu undertaken by a group of 12 people, including the art

director, the head of background, the head of special effects and some
animators. Randy Fullmer, speaking on the deluxe DVD, explains that at
Disney:
usually on most of these features, we try to do some kind of research trip.
We really try to immerse ourselves in cultures, in topography, and various
elements that will really bring art ideas to a film . . . . We experienced what
the people were like, looked at a lot of art work, looked at a lot of Incan art,
and just really got a sense of what Peru and the South American landscape
was about. Also, for this particular movie we had the animators go to a llama
farm; they went to the zoo. It was really beneficial for the animators to look
at the llamas first-hand, up close, to see how they moved, how they behaved,
and to get some of the characteristics and mannerisms from the llamas.
But, for all this professed concern with authenticity, how do the real
archaeological Incas and the hyperreal Disney Inca society compare?
The past is always constructed. The Incas are not merely represented
by their archaeological sites. Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, historians,
the native Quechua descendant community, the Peruvian nation-state,
diverse local, national and international players in the tourism industry,
and others re-present the Incas. Disney has joined this group. Here I
disagree with Cubitt (2000) who writes that Disney’s history comes from
schoolroom coloring books rather than historians and museums. This is
not true in the case of Groove where Disney invested considerable time
and money in research in order to then create its own cartoon (per)version.
Rather, Cubitt and I both agree with Jameson (1991: 46) who says
that simulation is not a matter of quotation (which establishes differences)
but of assimilation. Assimilation erases differences through dedifferen-
tiation (Lash, 1990: 11–15) or, as Rojek (1993) argues, the distinctions
between the ‘real’ world and simulated world are eroded more than
destroyed.
Although Inca material remains are abundant and highly visible in the
Central Andes, especially in the Cuzco region, their interpretation has long
been a source of academic debate. Beginning with the earliest Inca oral
testimony to the Spanish conquistadores, the history of the Incas has been
a site of competitive discourse and cultural production informed by the
present as much as by the past. Thus, competing Inca factions in the
defeated empire produced their own ‘official’ versions of preconquest
history in order to establish themselves as elite lineages deserving of privi-
lege and able to mediate identity and position in the newly colonial world
of Spanish social and political realities (see Urton, 1990). In the early seven-
teenth century, a literate indigenous Catholic, Felipe Guaman Poma de
Ayala (1980), drew on earlier Spanish chronicles and his own sense of social
justice to represent the Incas to the Iberian Crown as wise, efficient
administrators of a vast territory in contrast to the devastation of Andean
society wrought by the Spaniards. In the early twentieth century, the Incas
were reclaimed, revalorized and (re)presented as the greatest of all civili-
zations by Peru’s indigenista movement (as exemplary see the oeuvre of
Luis E. Valcárcel, in Valcárcel, 1981: 425–55); incanismo is still dominant
in Cuzco politics and culture (see Silverman, 2002). In the early 1940s the
Incas were produced as a benevolent socialist empire (Baudin, 1944) and
subsequently, from a less benign Marxist perspective, as an exploitative pre-
capitalist state (Patterson, 1991). In the 1940s and 1950s at the height of
American culture history the Incas were produced ‘factually’ in time and
space (e.g. Rowe, 1946, 1970). From the 1960s through the present, struc-
turalist-cognitive (e.g. Zuidema, 1964), sociopolitical and, arguably,
Andean-reifying (e.g. Morris and Thompson, 1985; Murra, 1975, 1980)
paradigms have became important. In the 1980s, a comparative and formal-
ist economic approach gained some popularity (e.g. D’Altroy and Earle,
1985) as attention shifted away from the core to the peripheries of the Inca
Empire (e.g. D’Altroy, 1992). In today’s ethnically wracked and extraordi-
narily inegalitarian world, scholarly production of the Incas emphasizes
ethnogenesis, social identity and materialized sociopolitical hierarchy in a
multiethnic context (e.g. Bauer, 1991, 1992; Covey, 2000; Hayashida, 1999).
As Isbell (1995) has acutely observed, the Andean past is ‘as you like it’ in
accordance with one’s chosen theoretical framework and ethnographic lens.
But, I am not equating the changing paradigms of archaeology with
Disney’s gaze. It is important to recognize that archaeologists of all theor-
etical persuasions are talking about the Incas who are known to have
existed 500 years ago and whose material remains are unanimously
identified. Among scholars, interpretations over state formation and
imperial organization vary, but not the definition of Inca. There are tangible
material remains that can be excavated, notwithstanding the intellectual
construction of the past from a labile present perch.
■ ACTS OF ANONYMIT Y AND ERASURE
As exotic as the llama is, Disney nonetheless Americanizes and culturally

domesticates it for the US viewing public. In Groove, there is an unremit-
ting insistence on pronouncing the word llama (‘yama’) as lama, a phonetic
appropriation and willful error also committed by every audio commen-
tator on the deluxe DVD. Moreover, despite the animated llama, to the
uninformed viewer, there is no indication that Inca Peru is the basis of
Groove’s ‘long ago in a faraway land’ in which ‘there was a prosperous
kingdom ruled by a young emperor’ – not in the film and not in the exten-
sive credits at its end. Only the audio commentary on the deluxe DVD and
technical information on the amazon.com and borders.com websites for the
standard DVD version of Groove indicate that the making of the movie
involved the ‘Animation Team’s Research Trip to Peru’. The technical

information on amazon.com for the deluxe DVD edition merely indicates
that there was ‘The Research Trip’, but not to where.
Remarkably, it is only by stringing together the DVD’s audio commen-
tary about the illustrated research trip that one figures out that Machu
Picchu is in Peru, that Machu Picchu is an Inca site, and that Groove is
based on the Incas. There is never any mention that there was a real Cuzco,
the true Inca capital (or that the filmmakers, like all visitors, obligatorily
had to spend a night in contemporary Cuzco in order to take the morning
train to Machu Picchu). In fact, on the supplemental disk the words ‘Machu
Picchu’, ‘Incan art’, ‘Peru and the South American landscape’, and ‘a South
American country’ are said only once and are easily missed.
Pocahontas (released in 1995) is the only Disney animated movie to deal
with a true historical event. Disney was quite aware of the risks of making
this film and consulted with various Native Americans. Nevertheless, when
it came out, Pocahontas was strongly criticized for being romanticized,
fictionalized, sanitized and nationalized for popular consumption. In the
aftermath of Pocahontas, it appears that Disney decided to play it safe with
Groove’s Inca Peru, even though foundation myths of the USA were not
at stake. This non-confrontational strategy is clear in the following quote
from the deluxe DVD’s audio commentary.
Notice that Kronk is carrying an aluminum foil doggie-bag llama. Talk about
liberating ourselves from historical accuracy. That’s the kind of thing that’s
just fun to put in . . . it also supports the notion that this [movie] is not
intended to represent any particular country in South America. If we were
gonna do that, we would have approached the film in a completely different
way. This is meant to be a fictitious place, fictitious characters, a once-upon-
a-time kind of fantasy . . . those elements point out that idea that this is not
intended to be taken seriously.
I attribute Disney’s cavalier, pick-and-choose approach to the material

culture of Peru’s ancient past to the primary evolution of Groove through
visual development (‘and see where visuals take us’ – audio comment on
the deluxe DVD) rather than as written text. Lack of knowledge and its
consequent temporal-cultural conflation are the simultaneous result and
cause of a blurry Peru as mere background (the settings in which the
characters act) for Groove’s action. The following statement of Colin
Stimpson, art director, in the audio commentary of the deluxe DVD, is
revelatory of this bricolage.
We looked very closely at a lot of small pottery and little sculpture. There’s a
cat design that came from a little piece of silverwork and a frog from a piece
of sculpture. There’s something about small items when blown up big – the
proportions are whimsical and fun . . . . There’s an owl in the background
that came from dark pottery. Also, by blowing small things up into huge
scale, the simplicity stays . . . . Yes, that’s one thing we noticed about the Inca
design work, it was always very bold and often the creatures had a rather
strange expression, slightly scary and also funny at the same time . . . . The
front of the palace came from a small gold statue about six inches high. We
were just stunned by all the Inca design work we found . . . . We saw that
tapestries are covered in whacky animal designs and also pottery and
goldwork. We just wanted to take that as inspiration and use their designs in
other ways.
‘We were just stunned by all the Inca design work we found.’ The Disney
team may have been astounded with their discovery, but ‘found’ is an
imperialist and appropriating action when vernacularly and scientifically a
culture is already known. Indeed, this is the complaint frequently levied at
Hiram Bingham who ‘found’ Machu Picchu in 1911, a grand Inca site well-
known to local inhabitants. The ‘whacky animal designs’ are incongruous
only to those unfamiliar with their cultural-iconological significance. The
appropriation is complete in the team’s use of ancient Peruvian art as ‘inspi-
ration’ for redesign.
Moreover, if we compare the images in Groove with their real archaeo-
logical prototypes, we see that Groove’s appropriation of ancient Peruvian
art and technology is specific at the same time that it is conflated. Actually,
the only aspects of Inca material culture that are used in the film are stone
masonry, one particular textile design that becomes a tile floor, and a silver
goblet on a table. The other decorative art in the film is derived from
various non-Inca and pre-Inca objects. The range of time and archaeo-
logical cultures implicated is 3000 years and at least 275,000 km2. The non-
Inca and pre-Inca originals could only have caught the eye of the research
team in Lima’s museums (I assume that the research team had to spend a
night in Lima before taking a morning flight to Cuzco and also upon their
return and that this provided the opportunity to visit museums) and/or in
art books. Indeed, given the complex and fast-moving iconography of
Groove and the deliberate bombardment of the audience with visual
stimuli, it is perplexing that the production team states in the deluxe DVD
audio commentary that they constantly strove to ‘simplify action for clarity
and readability’ by the audience, so as to not ‘overwhelm’ the public with
images. Here I would argue that we again have an excellent case of hyper-
reality. The legibility sought by Disney is two-fold: that the plot be easy to
follow (which it is) and that the supporting iconography be generically
precolumbian or, for the truly uneducated viewer, merely exotic (which it
is). In Disney’s hands, Groove so significantly departs and appropriates
from the archaeologically known Inca Empire and other precolumbian
civilizations of ancient Peru, that it is a textbook example of hyperreality
and simulacra.
Perhaps the best example I can give of Disney’s wanton rampage
through ancient Peru is the deluxe DVD’s audio commentary discussion
about ‘this little candleholder’, seen in Scene 9, ‘A Diabolical Dinner’,

where Emperor Kuzco is given the potion that turns him into a llama. We
are told that it ‘was once a character in a very early version of this movie.
He was called the huaca. He was a little advisor to the emperor. But, as is
the case with the development of the stories, characters come and go and
unfortunately he went. But we wanted to preserve his memory in this little
cameo here’. Actually, the candleholder is a composite of the early Middle
Horizon (c. AD 600) Wari-Tiwanaku frontal face staff god (the candles
replace the staffs), the late Middle Horizon (c. AD 900) Lambayeque/
Middle Sicán Lord, and an Early Intermediate Period (c. AD 200) Huaraz
stone sculpture, all rolled into one and poised atop an elongated base
resembling the neck of an Inca arybalus (a vessel for storing liquid; see
Fernández Baca, 1973: Plate 5).
Disney’s iconographic appropriations characterize the supplemental disk
as well. The disk’s menu is superimposed on a day-glo rendering of Paracas
Necropolis textile imagery from the south coast of Peru, predating the Incas
by almost 1500 years. Then, too, there are images imported from outside
the Andes that are used in the movie such as the footprinted map derived
from Contact Period Mexican codices, the iconic and derogatory contem-
porary Mexican sombrero, the contemporary Mexican piñata, a ‘Merlin the
magician’ character, Riverdance, and writing which never existed in the
precolumbian Andes.
But, Disney is not making any claims of authenticity for Groove. To the
contrary, Disney has gone out of its way to culturally de-author and de-
authorize the models that served as its artists’ inspiration. As such, Groove
is a virtual gaze, ‘not a direct perception but a received perception mediated
through representation . . . a gaze that travels in an imaginary flânerie
through an imaginary elsewhere and an imaginary elsewhen . . . . The
virtual gaze has a history rooted in all forms of visual representation, . . .
but produced most dramatically by photography [and by extension,
cinema]’ (Friedberg, 1993: 2; emphasis in original). As Friedberg suggests,
to go to the movies is to travel in space and time, literally and figuratively.
Yet there is a ‘real’ behind Disney’s representations. Groove both
represents and is ‘Disneythinking’ about ancient Peru. Following
Baudrillard (1983), the real has collapsed into the hyperreal. ‘When the
real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.
There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality’ (Baudrillard,
1983: 12). Baudrillard (1983), most especially, has argued that we are living
in an era of simulation in which the sharp line between reality and illusion
has become messy if not erased. Disney’s dedifferentiation of distinctions
that are traditionally made between retail marketing and amusement,
hotels and theme parks, work and play, education and entertainment
(Cubitt, 2000, citing Bryman, 1995: 165–68) can be seen as part of the
process. But, have our images, communications, and media usurped the
place of reality? Cubitt (2000) argues for a critical and selective use of the
concept of simulation and shows it to have an important political aspect.
That aspect is manifest in the manipulation of Cuzco today by local,
national and international agents of international tourism and economic
development (see Silverman, 2002).
■ PLACE AND PLACELESSNESS
Among Groove’s professional and avocational film critics, more than half
thought it relevant to geographically/culturally situate the action between
Emperor Kuzco and Pacha. But not all of the localizations were accurate;
some were contradictory; and some showed a shocking lack of knowledge.
Among the more egregious in the latter category were ‘Mayan, or Incan or
something . . . at an Aztec jungle diner’ (Kerry Douglas Dye, in Leisure-
Suit.net); ‘some mythical pre-Columbian Central American kingdom’ (Joe
Baltake, 2000); ‘a mythical mountain kingdom that, by appearances, at
least, seems to have been inspired by the ancient Aztecs and Mayans’
(Jeff Vice, 2000); ‘some pseudo-Aztec country’ (Vincent Haig in
WHSmith.co.uk); and ‘Aztec setting . . . Aztec prince’ (The Film Critiquer,
7 February 1999: http://www.thefilmcritiquer.com/the_film_critiquer/
Animation_Previews/Kingdominthesun.htm). The comment that most
annoyed me in my survey of reviews was made by the distinguished critic,
Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times, 15 December 2000). Although he liked
the film and correctly set the action in ‘a mythical kingdom somewhere in
South America’, he says that Emperor Kuzco’s name ‘sound[s] like a
discount store’, ignorant of the fact that this really was the name of the Inca
capital city.
I am especially interested in the comments of three reviewers of Groove.
Writing for the Toronto Sun on 15 December 2000 (http://www.mrqe.com/
lookup?emperor%27s+new+groove), Bob Thompson complained that the
‘mythical Inca-like mountain kingdom’ was ‘barely etched and not-quite
realized’ by Disney. Similarly, MaryAnn Johanson observed that ‘while the
film’s environment may be pre-Columbian, it could well be almost
anywhere – the pseudo-Inca setting is lovely and colorful, but it serves only
as a backdrop to an essentially timeless, placeless story . . . . Groove feels
no need to treat its setting with much semblance of reality, which allows all
sorts of modernalia, from theme-park roller coasters to roadside diners’
(http://www.flickfilosopher.com). A pseudonymous ‘rogue librarian’ per-
spicaciously observed on the joblo.com website on 19 December 2000 that
Groove ‘fits into any cultural environment and time period . . . . That it’s
supposed to be Incan/Mayan doesn’t matter: it could have been set in
Hugenot France or Imperial Russia or 1980s Japan and it would still be the
same story. Which is why it doesn’t matter that voices are all American-
ized.’ But it does matter.
In Place and Placelessness, Edward Relph (1976: 82) identifies ‘an inau-
thentic attitude to place [which] is essentially no sense of place, for it
involves no awareness of the deep and symbolic significances of places and
no appreciation of their identities.’ Placelessness ‘does not acknowledge
significance in places’ (Relph, 1976: 143). Relph’s statement clearly
describes the inauthenticity and placelessness of Groove. Indeed, Randy
Fullmer, the film’s producer, stated that as the production team discussed
particular details, such as whether or not to show a wheel since the Incas
did not use the wheel, ‘We realized at the end of that day we were taking
this film way too seriously’ (Entertainment Weekly, 18 August 2000: 92).
Disney made a midcourse correction with the result that a non-identifiably
familiar, but undeniably ancient, south-of-the-border civilization-cum-
pastiche was created.
Placelessness is a symptom of a self-conscious attitude which ‘consists
especially of a relationship between man and objects in which the objects
are created and produced solely for consumption by a mass public’ (Relph,
1976: 82). It is in this framework that we should understand the tight linkage
between Disney’s animated movies (such as Groove), Disney’s retail
marketing around those movies, and Relph’s placelessness. Disney, an
economic and ideological corporate activist, is manipulating media to
deliberately create and encourage placelessness and, by so doing, ‘weaken-
ing . . . the identity of places to the point where they not only look alike
but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience’ (Relph,
1976: 82) – whether Celebration, Florida or Kuzcotopia.
Although Groove is placeless, within the movie’s action Pacha’s village
is explicitly placeful. Pacha defends his family’s right and desire to live there
in words evocative of the keenest anthropological descriptions of sense of
place. He says, ‘When the sun hits just there, the mountain sings.’ The
mountain anchors their social life. It is dwelling in its most Heideggerian
sense, ‘not just living in place but also [the] ways of fusing setting to situ-
ation, locality to life-world’ (Feld and Basso, 1996: 10). Yet for Emperor
Kuzco, who wants to destroy Pacha’s village to build his own private estate-
resort, the mountain does not sing and, ultimately, one mountain is the
same as any other.
The placelessness of Groove extends to Disney’s appropriation of char-
acter names, done without any regard for their cultural significance. As
Pratt (1992: 33) realized, the act of naming is an assertion of power: ‘the
naming, the representing, and the claiming are all one; the naming brings
the reality of order into being’. Emperor Kuzco’s name is taken from the
capital city of the Inca Empire, Cuzco or Cusco (in Spanish)/Qosqo
(Quechua). Disney’s use of ‘K’ in Kuzco is particularly notable since the
letter does not exist in Spanish and Quechua was an unwritten language,
thereby doubling distancing the emperor’s name from the ancient people
and site. Pacha is an impossible name for a peasant of the Inca empire.
Pacha is an untranslatable, complex, polysemous Andean concept that
simultaneously denotes ‘earth, world, time, place’ (Salomon, 1991: 14).
Pacha is ‘the world as a given arrangement of time, space and matter’
(Salomon, 1991: 15). The concept is found in the names of the legendary
builder of imperial Cuzco and ninth Inca emperor, Pachacutec (‘he who
shakes up the world’), and at the great oracular pilgrimage shrine of Pacha-
camac (the deity ‘World Maker’) on the central coast. Chicha (Pacha’s wife)
is the name of a beer brewed from fermented maize that was a ceremonial-
ritual beverage consumed in the prehispanic Andes and still drunk today.
Yzma (the evil advisor scheming for the throne) must be Yschma, the name
of the late prehispanic central coast polity where Pachacamac was located.
Kronk is a completely made up name, though his appearance is clearly
derived from running warrior figures painted on north coast Mochica
pottery dating to ca. AD 400–600 (see, for example, Donnan and McClel-
land, 1999: Figure 4.105).
Tenuously, too, I would suggest that it is ethically easier for Disney to
profit from Peru’s archaeological patrimony by not naming the model for
the film’s mythical empire. The Peruvian state does not hold a copyright to
the reproduction of its stunning ancient heritage. Indeed the National Insti-
tute of Culture can barely enforce national laws that prohibit looting and
require permits for the temporary export of pre-Columbian works of art.
Given that the sale of illegally removed Peruvian antiquities continues
unabated on the international art market even though the geographical
provenience of these pieces is known, and considering that Peru receives
no royalty for the coca in the name Coca-Cola even though its own plant
was once an ingredient in the secret formula, there appears to be no hope
that Peru can profit from Groove in the absence of an explicit acknowl-
edgment of the Incas and Cuzco in the film.
■ STEREOT YPES AND RESPONSIVENESS IN THE DISNEY

ENTERPRISE
In Groove, Disney’s archetypcal stereotypes are blatant. During the course

of the research trip to Machu Picchu, the production team ‘experienced
what the people were like’, a statement ironically illustrated by a cut-away
from posing Quechua Indians in full ethnic dress at the Pisaq market (a
tourist-attraction town near Cuzco) to a scene in Groove, in which Pacha
kisses his wife Chicha and picks up his children, a gesture that, at least
today, rarely if ever occurs in traditional Andean communities but satisfies
Disney’s and the US viewer’s universalizing ideology of gender roles
(husband-wife), nuclear family (parent-child, sibling-sibling relationships),

and domesticity. As Byrne and McQuillan (1999: 59) observe, domesticity
(the great discovery of the bourgeois age) is ‘a discourse that Disney is
really at home with’, notwithstanding the pervasive absence of parents,
especially a mother, for main characters throughout so many other Disney
animations and comics.
The deluxe DVD audio commentary states that Disney regarded
showing Chicha pregnant as a breakthrough in animated movies and that
Disney executives gave their permission, so long as the expectant Chicha
was ‘tastefully’ drawn. She is so tasteful, in fact, that she appears to be an
elegant Classical noblewoman with coiffed hair and toga garment, rather
than an Indian peasant woman with braids, chapped cheeks, rough hands,
calloused feet and childbirth-distended stomach.
Nor can Disney resist expressing an undercurrent of homophobia. The
scene where Pacha gives Kuzco-cum-llama mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
can be read on two levels: Pacha’s dismay at the llama mouth, replete with
flapped out tongue (‘Oh gross!’ moaned children in the audience when I
saw the movie), and the mutual distress of Pacha and Kuzco-as-cognizant
male-despite-llama-appearance at the same sex intimacy.
While it is true that ‘Disney has always preferred autocracy to democ-
racy’ in its animated movies (Byrne and McQuillan, 1999: 85), it is inter-
esting that in Groove, the very familiar democratic act of petitioning for
redress of an authority’s wrong is ultimately successful. Though the
kingship is not toppled, the emperor does reassume power as a more
mature and humane ruler. This is clearly progress over some of Disney’s
other recent animated films which appear to celebrate antidemocratic social
relations (see Giroux, 1999: 107). On the other hand, it is important to
recognize that Pacha, the happy peasant, felt such loyalty to the office of
the emperor that he was willing to help him even though success would
mean the destruction of his village (what would Gramsci say!). Thus, the
agency and power of peasant-cum-Pacha is severely limited in Groove and
dependent on the moralization of a particular emperor. Yet it must be
acknowledged that here Disney is only portraying what were truly hierar-
chic relations in the Inca Empire where the agency and power of peasants
were severely limited, the Inca state policy of ‘reciprocity writ large’
notwithstanding (see Murra, 1980: 88).
Remarkably, Disney’s notoriously conservative political-business prac-
tices underwent internal scrutiny and discussion as a result of the partici-
pation of Sting, a major popular culture icon, in the movie’s musical score.
Mark Dindal’s audio commentary about scenes deleted from the movie
indicates that in the original ending of Groove, Emperor Kuzco built
Kuzcotopia at Pacha’s village. In this version, Pacha’s village was not
destroyed, but Kuzco built a giant palace (crowned by a Wari-Tiwanaku
sun face) near Pacha’s house. Sting objected to that ending and said so.
Rather than being dismissed from the project, as he thought would happen,
Dindal and Fullmer decided to listen to him and have Kuzco build a little
house appropriate to the community where Pacha lives. Dindal states that
they realized their planned ending ‘was really socially irresponsible, not
ecologically friendly at all’. He credits Sting with ‘saving us’. Dindal also
says that Sting convinced the Disney team to ‘respect indigenous cultures’
and not ‘force our culture on other cultures’. Dindal’s and Fullmer’s
comments about the revised ending are full of irony since, in acceding to
Sting, Disney executives were suggesting that giant theme parks should not
be built where local people might not want them and that a powerful
contemporary empire (Disney) might well have to be publicly accountable
and less culturally imperialist.
■ CONCLUSION
Groove is a delightful animated movie, quick-paced, musical, visually

stunning, full of puns. Therefore, it could be argued that its cultural mixings
and missings cause no harm. But they do. They are not innocent errors.
They are the result of a very particular attitude in the Disney studio that
essentializes, exoticizes and objectifies the past and those who created it.
In this article, I have been concerned with Groove-as-ideological-
symbolism and Groove-as-ideological-weapon. Disney’s masterful visual-
izations in Groove deploy dominant power endowed by Disney’s own
economic might. Movies are a facet of the exhibitionary culture typically
associated with museums. Movies, too, can presént and présent the past in
tourable, consumable form (e.g. Disney merchandise). As Friedberg (1993:
7) so aptly observes, ‘film and television spectatorship has produced a new
relation to the past. The past is, now, inexorably bound with images of a
constructed past: a confusing blur of “simulated” and “real”.’ Cinematic
spectatorship produces a timelessness; the past is interminably recycled,
and ever-accessible (Friedberg, 1993: 9).
Disney’s appropriations are exemplary of Jameson’s (1984) critique of
late capitalist and consumer society, for Groove is Jameson’s postmodern
pastiche – a ‘blank parody’ of ancient Peru, a ‘complacent play of historical
allusion’ that overtly seeks to hide or deny the ‘healthy normality’ from
which it has ‘momentarily borrowed’ and diverged. Groove effaces history
by its ‘random cannibalization of all the styles of the past [in a] play of
random stylistic allusion’ (Jameson, 1984: 65–6; see Appadurai, 1996: 29–30
quoted earlier). Groove also exemplifies Jameson’s postmodernism in its
unreferenced culture of derivative iconographic quotations. In fact, Groove
could be considered one of Jameson’s nostalgia films since the deluxe DVD
audio commentary explains that the Disney animators sought to make
Pacha’s village ‘beautiful with shapes that are round and calm . . . peaceful’
– to me, as if trying to recapture the ideal, naive, stable, prosperous small-
town America of the 1950s, but in a different setting.
Because Groove is based on a real place, time and society, and because
the making of the movie involved a research trip to Peru, we also can
consider Groove to be a form of travel writing and cultural translation. As
such it is amenable to critical treatment as applied by, for instance, Said
(1979), Pratt (1992), Duncan and Gregory (1999) and Rojek and Urry
(1997) to other-toured cultures. The irony should not be lost that Disney –
creator of the paradigmatic theme park tourist industry of the late twenti-
eth century – spawned its own real tourists: its production team who went
to Peru and came back with photographic, pencilled, and crayoned images
of happy contemporary domestic Andean subjects whom they morphed
into ancient ones. Like Pratt’s (1992: 7) ‘seeing-man’, their eyes passively
surveyed the Cuzco region and possessed it in imagery that was then
animated according to their script without any encumbrances from natives,
living or dead. Certainly, the Disney team did not ‘dwell-in-travel’, to use
Lury’s (1997) term. Rather, theirs was a ‘hit-and-run trip’ to acquire the
objects (Lury, 1997) and first-hand knowledge necessary for the
visualization of the movie. In the deluxe DVD’s supplemental disk, we see
the most important of these trophies – color photographs – prominently
displayed in wall panels along the corridors of the Disney studio where
Groove was produced. In keeping with this line of argumentation, it can
also be argued that seeing Groove is virtual travel and owning a VHS or
DVD copy of Groove is a form of ‘object of travel’ practice, once removed.
And yet, to play devil’s advocate and to return to my basic contention,
Disney’s conscious non-identification or non-naming of Peru in Groove
may well reveal the company’s doubts about its clientele’s level of global
cosmopolitanism (Lury, 1997).
What becomes readily apparent in this critical travel approach is that
‘the forces of cultural production and reception are not equal’ (Giroux,
1999: 9). It is Disney telling a story about ancient, albeit anonymous, Peru.
And because ‘these films possess at least as much cultural authority and
legitimacy for teaching roles, values, and ideals as more traditional sites of
learning . . ., Disney films . . . help children understand who they are, what
societies are about . . . . The authority of such films in part, stems from
their unique form of representation and their ever-growing presence . . .
such authority is also produced and secured within a media apparatus
equipped with dazzling technology, sound effects, and imagery packaged
as entertainment’ (Giroux, 1999: 84). The public who receives Disney’s
message then creates its own images of these (re)presentations based on
‘Disneyknowledge’. Moreover, we must consider the poststructuralist
critique of how cultural texts, even those as highly polished as Disney’s,
are never seamless. There exists the possibility of creative misreadings and
misviewings of the film-cum-text that always provide the consumer of the

text with space for resignification. Certainly this occurs at Disneyland and
Disney World.
The vast majority of US movie-goers are ‘accidental’ tourists or ‘post-
tourists’ who will never see the appropriated models for themselves.
Indeed, there may be nothing but appropriated models and copies of
copies. In the case of a movie such as Groove, which is actually sited in a
foreign, albeit fictionalized, land, the issue is all the more sensitive if we
accept the (chilling) statement made by Michael Ovitz (cited in Giroux,
1999: 26), former Disney executive, that ‘Disney isn’t a company as much
as it is a nation-state with its own ideas and attitudes’. As various critics
have observed, the Disney ideology is aggressively politically conservative,
corporatist and global. Disney is not just American popular culture, it is a
world culture and mainstay of the global economy (theme parks, merchan-
dise, media conglomerates, and the employment and revenues these
generate). In this regard, Disney fits very well into Appadurai’s (1996: 35–6)
concept of ‘mediascape’. I agree with Dorfman and Mattelart (1971: 133)
that ‘by invading the past (and the future) with the same structures of the
present, Disney takes possession – in the name of its social class – of the
whole of human history’ (my translation).
I have noted above the well-known litany of Disney’s celluloid ‘sins’:
sexism, political conservatism, homophobia, racism, cultural imperialism,
class denigration and so on. Cindy Fuchs has explicitly referred to the
‘perennial bugaboos’ of Disney animators in her review of Groove
(Philadelphia City Paper, 14–21 December 2000). And 30 years ago
Dorfman and Mattelart (1971: 69) excoriated Disney’s ‘nourishment in
international stereotypes’, specifically criticizing Disney’s pre-Groove
comic book treatment of Peru.
Who can deny that the Peruvian (in Inca-Blinca) is somnolent, sells pottery,
sits on his haunches, eats hot peppers, has a millennial culture . . . . Disney
does not invent these caricatures, but does exploit them to their maximum
efficacy. Disney encloses all of these places of the world into a deeply rooted
vision of the dominant (national and international) classes. Disney gives this
vision coherency and justifies the social system on which it is based. Mass
culture media uses these cliches to dilute the everyday life of the people.
[Thus,] the only way a Mexican recognizes and knows Peru is by means of
Disney’s prejudice which means that Peru can’t define itself, can only be
that, can’t escape this situation of proto-typicalness, is prisoner of its own
exoticism . . . . Disney sensationalizes. (Dorfman and Mattelart, 1971: 69–70,
my translation)
However, Disney is not monolithic and unchanging. I have shown that there
are many Disney ideologies, each with its own consequences. There is the
expansive, corporatist, bottom-line, labor exploitative, money-making
Disney that is blueprinting the USA in its image using intermeshed
economic might and political wherewithall to carry out its agenda. There
is the equally well-known conservative Disney that pushes family values
and the ‘American way of life’ which, in Disney’s hands, is homophobic,
capitalist, traditionally gendered and autocratic. There is the related
imperialist Disney that is aggressively opening foreign markets for its
diversified products. There is also the tentatively or calculatedly enlight-
ened Disney, which subtly permits a message of ecological balance to be
aired in Groove and which is currently promoting wildlife reserves. In this
article, we have seen examples of all of these Disney ideologies. As Giroux
has noted, ‘Disney culture, like all cultural formations, is riddled with
contradictions . . . Disney culture offers potentially subversive moments
and pleasures in a range of contradictory and complex experiences’
(Giroux, 1999: 5).
The easy conflation of time, space and society created by Disney and
accepted by viewers of Groove is explicable as a result of the style of this
movie, which is homogenizing and iterates the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby
‘Road to [Wherever]’ feature films in their shared genre of riotous action,
quick-witted story line, music and brilliant color. The differences that make
the invented societies worth animating are, at the same time, minimized or
inconsequentialized in fulfillment of the dominant Manichean moral of the
movies: good versus evil, cooperation versus individualism.
Disney appears obsessed with remaking a pristine, innocent past
(Bryman, 1995). But there is a fundamental difference between Disney’s
recent animated movies about mythical, never-existed people or places,
such as Hercules (ancient Greece), Aladdin (ancient Islamic Iraq), Mulan
(ancient China) and Atlantis (ancient sunken continent), and movies such
as Groove (and Road to El Dorado by DreamWorks, 2000), which concern
ancient societies about which there are archaeological, historical and ethno-
historical data. Walt Disney once said, ‘We just make the picture, and let
the professors tell us what they mean’ (quoted in Bell et al., 1995: 1). This
is disingenuous. As others have argued and as I have reframed in this
article, conscious ideologies are at work behind Disney’s seemingly ahis-
torical and apolitical movies. Indeed, Schickel (1968: 227) observed that
Walt Disney appropriated, ‘but that process nearly always robbed the work
at hand of its uniqueness, of its soul . . . . In its place he put jokes and songs
and fright effects . . . . He came always as a conqueror . . . . It is a trait, as
many have observed, that many Americans share when they venture into
foreign lands hoping to do good but equipped only with knowhow instead
of sympathy and respect for alien traditions’ (Schickel, 1968: 227). In
Groove, we clearly see the validity of this criticism.
Perhaps most alarming about the educational value professed by the
Disney enterprise is that in this genre of animated films Disney ‘makes a
claim on the future through its nostalgic view of past’ (Giroux, 1999: 88).
This is true not only in Disney’s Norman Rockwellized America, but for
every real country that has served as a model for the transnational media
corporation’s creative animation genius. There should have been nothing
boring to Roy Disney about making an animated version of the Inca
Empire and its myths, replete as it would have been with artistically legiti-
mate inaccuracies. And, indeed, a tremendous amount of archaeological
research is obvious in the movie, most notable – in my opinion – in the
hilarious ‘bride scene’ which must be based on some knowledge of the aclla
(chosen women; see Silverblatt, 1987) as well as female motifs painted on
Inca pottery (see Fernández Baca, 1973: Figs. 323–9, 333–4, 336). In fiction-
alizing Cuzco-Machu Picchu to the point of anonymity, Disney has not told
a story about some mythical kingdom that never existed, rather Disney has
denied the Inca Empire which did. Whereas the genre of historical movie,
with all the faults of veracity that its films have, contributes positively to
knowledge and curiosity about the past, such cannot be the result of Groove
because the movie is explicitly set in a mythical kingdom. Moreover, the
form or medium of Groove (animation) must necessarily influence our
perception of its content. Cartoon animation fictionalizes as well as trivial-
izes history into entertainment and unreality to a far greater degree than
movies with human actors whose very tangibility supports the veracity of
the story being told.
Why is this important? Ultimately, the answer can be expressed best by
quoting Walter Benjamin’s (1968: 255) fifth thesis on the philosophy of
history: ‘every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as
one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably’.
Acknowledgements
I am immensely grateful to Dr Amy Aidman (Institute of Communications
Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) who encouraged me to
pursue the ideas expressed in this article, provided valuable literature references
and incisive comments on Disney, and gave generously of her time and knowledge
to discuss the topic with me. David O’Brien (Department of Art History,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was a critical reader of the original
manuscript and helped me hone various arguments. Scott Hutson and anonymous
reviewers motivated me to more fully explore the theoretical dimensions of the
Disney case study and their input is appreciated. My thanks to Lynn Meskell for
permitting me to revise the manuscript. I alone am responsible for the article’s final
form.
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HELAINE SILVERMAN took her MA at Columbia University and the

PhD at The University of Texas at Austin. Most of her archaeological field-
work has been conducted on the south coast of Peru, where she focuses
on the development of and variations in complex socio-political organiz-
ation and urbanism in the Central Andes, landscape and the built
environment, and material expressions of ritual, ideology, and cultural
identity. Her current research interrogates the contemporary construc-
tion and manipulation of archaeological knowledge in Peru in terms of
issues of national identity, political and social practice, tourism, and
heritage management. She is an associate professor in the Department
of Anthropology at the University of Illinois and holds an adjunct pro-
fessorship in this institution’s Department of Landscape Architecture.
[email: helaine@uiuc.edu]

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02 Silverman (JG/d) 1/10/02 2:09 pm Page 298

Journal of Social Archaeology ARTICLE

Groovin’ to ancient Peru

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 299

■ READING DONALD DUCK

300 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

a culturally sanctioned hegemony. Speaking of Disney overall, Giroux

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 301

■ ISSUES OF HISTORY, HYPERREALIT Y AND SIMULACRA

Baudrillard (1995) has written of a disappearance of history and our current

302 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 303

uncontrolled conversations with ‘guests’ (customers). Such verbal creativity

304 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

. . . materials [buildings] no longer “quote” . . . but incorporate into their

■ DEPICTING THE PAST, DEHISTORICIZING THE INCAS

Whether in comic books or on the silver screen, in animated form or ‘real-

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 305

Disney’s prepositional waffling is significant. A kingdom in the sun could

306 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

Machu Picchu undertaken by a group of 12 people, including the art

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 307

■ ACTS OF ANONYMIT Y AND ERASURE

As exotic as the llama is, Disney nonetheless Americanizes and culturally

308 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

involved the ‘Animation Team’s Research Trip to Peru’. The technical

I attribute Disney’s cavalier, pick-and-choose approach to the material

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 309

310 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

about ‘this little candleholder’, seen in Scene 9, ‘A Diabolical Dinner’,

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 311

■ PLACE AND PLACELESSNESS

312 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 313

■ STEREOT YPES AND RESPONSIVENESS IN THE DISNEY

In Groove, Disney’s archetypcal stereotypes are blatant. During the course

314 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

(husband-wife), nuclear family (parent-child, sibling-sibling relationships),

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 315

Groove is a delightful animated movie, quick-paced, musical, visually

316 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 317

misviewings of the film-cum-text that always provide the consumer of the

318 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 319

320 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

Appadurai, A. (1996) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural

Silverman Groovin’ to ancient Peru 321

Friedberg, A. (1993) Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley:

322 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)

Said, E. (1979) Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

HELAINE SILVERMAN took her MA at Columbia University and the

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